Share This Story!

The Supreme Court ruled that criminal defendants can refuse guilty pleas, even if their lawyers believe it's the best way to avoid the death penalty.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices granted Louisiana's Robert McCoy a new trial for the killing of three people in 2008 so that he can claim innocence.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that criminal defendants can refuse guilty pleas, even if their lawyers believe it's the best way to avoid the death penalty.

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the justices granted Louisiana's Robert McCoy a new trial for the killing of three people in 2008, even though the evidence against him appeared so overwhelming that his attorney entered a guilty plea.

Defendants, Ginsburg said, "may wish to avoid the opprobrium that attends admitting the murder of family members; or, believing life in prison not worth living, a defendant may prefer to risk death for any hope, however small, of exoneration."

Justice Samuel Alito, along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissented. Alito said attorney Larry English was right to enter a guilty plea because his client had refused to find another attorney until it was too late.

"I would hold that he did not violate any fundamental right by expressly acknowledging that petitioner killed the victims instead of engaging in the barren exercise that petitioner's current counsel now recommends," Alito said.

The facts of the case were straightforward. The mother, stepfather and son of McCoy's estranged wife were found shot to death in 2008. Everything pointed to McCoy — the 911 call, the getaway car, the chase, a phone, personal items, the gun and bullets, a Walmart video, testimony from a brother and two friends, and more.

English told McCoy he planned to tell the jury in his 2011 trial that his client committed the acts but was not guilty of first-degree murder because of his mental state. He later told the jury that McCoy was "crazy" and had "snapped."

But McCoy insisted he was 240 miles away in Houston at the time of the murders and had witnesses who could offer an alibi. He said police committed the killings in a "drug deal gone bad."

In the end, English's strategy didn't work. McCoy was found guilty and sentenced to death. The state Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that he did not deserve a new trial.

Seth Waxman, a veteran Supreme Court litigator who has defended death row inmates for 40 years, told the justices during oral argument in January that McCoy's rights to a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment were violated.

When Louisiana Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill said lawyers in English's position should be able to disallow a defense strategy that would be "a futile charade," most of the justices disagreed.

McCoy's new lawyer, Richard Bourke, director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, said the ruling "restores in Louisiana the constitutional right of every individual to present their defense to a jury.

"While rare in the rest of the country, what happened to Mr. McCoy was a part of Louisiana’s broken criminal justice system that fails to respect individual human dignity," Bourke said. "Mr. McCoy’s was one of ten death sentences imposed in Louisiana since 2000 that have been tainted with the same flaw."